volgadon Posted September 18, 2012 Posted September 18, 2012 Your link isn't very helpful. It's just a parallel translation. Check here or here instead.What you've failed to note is that when things like helev, etc., are offered up in smoke, the verb is qualified. Also, where inside the temple were animal sacrifices offered? 1
volgadon Posted September 18, 2012 Posted September 18, 2012 From the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible.In the Bible the bronze/copper serpent is evaluated quite differently in its two occurrences in Num. 21 and 2 Kgs 18. In the former, the snake image is mandated by Yahweh as a cure for the venomous bites of the sarap .(lit. 'burning') snakes, while in the latter the image is conceived as a non-Yahwistic or idolatrous religious object, which Hezekiah rightly destroys. In the clash between these two texts we find contested claims about the ritual figurine. It is plausible that the cause of this clash was the prophetic critique of ritual symbols, in which a number of traditional Yahwistic concepts and symbols carne to be reinterpreted as idolatrous or 'Canaanite', including the 'high places' (bamot), the 'standing stones' (massebot), and the 'sacred posts' ('ashera, asherim), which are also destroyed by Hezekiah in 2 Kgs 18:4. This reevaluation of traditional symbols, evidenced in the eighth century prophets and in Deuteronomy. may be the motivation for Hezekiah's destruction of Nehushtan. The statement in 2 Kgs 18:4 that the Israelites had burned incense to the statue suggests that the Israelites worshipped it as a god, but the polemical thrust of this remark may be a revisionist gloss on ordinary Yahwistic cultic piety. The bronze snake probably belonged to the traditional repertoire of Yahwistic symbols. this emblem signifying Yahweh's power to heal (so Numbers 21). Its destruction seems to have occurred in the wake of a wideranging reconception of religious practice and symbolism. 1
volgadon Posted September 18, 2012 Posted September 18, 2012 Your link isn't very helpful. It's just a parallel translation.My purpose was to provide the Hebrew text. 1
Cobalt-70 Posted September 19, 2012 Posted September 19, 2012 What you've failed to note is that when things like helev, etc., are offered up in smoke, the verb is qualified. Also, where inside the temple were animal sacrifices offered?I'm not saying they were. Many sacrifices to YHWH were offered in the courtyard, even though YHWH himself was in the Most Holy Place (or at least, his throne was there between the cherubim on the ark, his "anti-idol"). But incense sacrifices to YHWH were conducted in the inner sanctuary, and that would likely also be the place where incense sacrifices to Asherah and the Nehushtan were offered.
Cobalt-70 Posted September 19, 2012 Posted September 19, 2012 From the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible.In the Bible the bronze/copper serpent is evaluated quite differently in its two occurrences in Num. 21 and 2 Kgs 18. In the former, the snake image is mandated by Yahweh as a cure for the venomous bites of the sarap .(lit. 'burning') snakes, while in the latter the image is conceived as a non-Yahwistic or idolatrous religious object, which Hezekiah rightly destroys. In the clash between these two texts we find contested claims about the ritual figurine. It is plausible that the cause of this clash was the prophetic critique of ritual symbols, in which a number of traditional Yahwistic concepts and symbols carne to be reinterpreted as idolatrous or 'Canaanite', including the 'high places' (bamot), the 'standing stones' (massebot), and the 'sacred posts' ('ashera, asherim), which are also destroyed by Hezekiah in 2 Kgs 18:4. This reevaluation of traditional symbols, evidenced in the eighth century prophets and in Deuteronomy. may be the motivation for Hezekiah's destruction of Nehushtan. The statement in 2 Kgs 18:4 that the Israelites had burned incense to the statue suggests that the Israelites worshipped it as a god, but the polemical thrust of this remark may be a revisionist gloss on ordinary Yahwistic cultic piety. The bronze snake probably belonged to the traditional repertoire of Yahwistic symbols. this emblem signifying Yahweh's power to heal (so Numbers 21). Its destruction seems to have occurred in the wake of a wideranging reconception of religious practice and symbolism.I would agree with this author only to the extent that his description reflects a much later understanding of the bronze serpent that post-dates the writing of the J source. The further you go back in time, the most polytheistic Hebrew religion is. The story in Numbers 21 of the Israelites seeking healing powers from the bronze snake idol is probably the worship of this idol as a separate healing god, though possibly an inferior god within YHWH's pantheon.The story of the bronze serpent is one of the oldest parts of the bible, written by the J source, and the story itself (incorporated by J from an even earlier source) evidently predates the later prohibitions (contemporary to J and E) against making graven (E) or molten (J) idols. (Or perhaps the bronze serpent was considered to be graven but not molten, and thus compatible with J theology.)
Hamba Tuhan Posted September 20, 2012 Posted September 20, 2012 I have a son that turned 19 a year ago and hasn't turned his papers in yet. I hope I haven't hurt his chances. But I've tried to encourage him to either go on a mission or attend some kind of schooling. He works full time and has a girlfriend. So we'll see.Tacenda, what reason(s) do you think your son would have for serving a mission?
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